Everywhere is mentioned that magically active persons are strange and disturbing to mundane people. Additional they are quite rare and therefore they should be even more weird than anything else, and the media-productions contribute to theirs to enhance this view. But nevertheless i cannot find any social modifiers (except at intimidation) that shows this "respect" to ovisously superhuman beings. Ho do you resolve this? Is magic in your SR-backround-world common and completely accepted? How about SURGE and paracritters?

Mages and Antennaboys, I guess they call themselves Technomancers, have a gift to tap into a power normals cannot. While everyone knows this, its still an advantage. When a guy has advantage over me, I find it scary.

When a gal has advantage over me, I find it kinky.

The main reason is that magic has been a part of the shadowrun-world for about 60 years now. Most people never lived in a world without magic.
Sure, only a small (but steadily growing) part of metahumanity can use those powers, but they are generally rudimentally understood.
Sure, mages can do things to you that harm you in esoteric ways that you don't understand, but so can a hacker that decides to mess with you.
Add to that the emergence of technomancers, changelings, metasapients and synthetic intelligences and there are a lot of really new, really scary things to worry about than to waste time worrying about simple magic...
The world has changed, got kinda used to magic and the different tone in the descriptions of mages and magic in SR4 compared to the earlier iterations reflect that.

Most mages will hide the fact that they can cast magic (it tends to attract lynch mobs in some areas), but if someone found out you can sling the mojo I would impose a social modifier to reflect it (depending on if they are interested, scared, or angered by magic). Interactions between magic users would normally not incur a social modifier, but I may have a respect modifier if you have a higher initiation grade then another mage.

There are social modifiers (SR4A, p. 131) that can be used to account for this fear or suspicion.

Well now, I like that....

Initiation grade isn't really something that you display in character. A higher Magic rating can be waved around, but that really says something else...

Yeah, I would have to agree with that... how do you tell someone's initiate grade? A little tough, Their Magic rating on the other hand is not so difficult...

Depends, if you are a 7ft troll mage....yeah you'd be scary. The average human mage-more awe than terror. The female elvan mage with that Chr 7, the response is probabably a little more straight forward (at least for the majority of the male population )

The social modifiers have already been referred to - you get a +2 to your intimidation roll if you have a weapon or obvious magic.

Magic is supposed to evoke a mixed reaction in people - adulation in some, envy in others, fear and hatred in still others. You wish you could fly and shoot lightning bolts like Suki Redflower, you don't think it's fair that your brother can do magic and you can't, you're scared because one of them could be reading your mind right now.

Paracritters have differing degrees of basic rights depending on the region - some places treat them like animals, or even put a bounty on them, while other places grant them full citizenship.

SURGE engenders some fear and prejudice, and marginalizes most people who have it, although the hysteria has died down a bit. Player characters will probably suffer this prejudice less, because, to use an analogy, they would rather play one of the X-men than one of the morlocks. Someone with a squid-like face might get some stares, but if someone has glowing gold eyes and wavy blue hair, he would probably blend right in at a lot of augmentation-heavy clubs.

Thats for sure. I just asked because in our setting magic seems to be as usual as using a comlink or eating at a stuffer shack. In prevoius editions of SR the general view was a little bit different to that. Thanks for your replies.

My group and I have had this discussion from time to time, and I'll give you my view of the subject. While magic has been a part of the world for about 6 decades, I would say very few regular folks deal with it in their day to day lives, and for the vast majority of folks, their knowledge of all things magical comes from what is in the trids. Most players "understand" the mechanics and limitations of magic because they play the game, and I would say for most of us it is hard to divorce that knowledge from what a mundane character knows. I see it happen all of the time in my games and I consider my players to be pretty good about that stuff, but like I said, it's hard to "forget" that you know something your character shouldn't. For the unwashed masses, magic is some scary shit, and in a wireless world, technomancers can be just as scary. I'm not saying that everyone's going to lynch a mage, or flee in terror when they pop off a little trid entertainment for fun, but most folks will be wary of a person they believe might be able to control their minds, turn them to goo, or use the art to see them jerking off in the privacy of their own homes. Are the fears unfounded and irrational? Sure, but as RL continuously points out, people are not rational, especially when an eager media fans the flames and mob mentality takes hold.

A Person is Smart... People are Stupid...

Reminds me a line about having the same eating habit of a devil rat.

Great point. I think I'm going to steal this for SR3R. Good observation.